For hydraulics and hydrology practice, mostly engineers use DOS programs such as HEC-2 and HEC-1 etc. to calculate the water surface elevation and peak flow rates from 1980s. During recent years, people start to use Windows programs such as HEC-RAS and HEC-HMS to finish the same task user-friendly and graphically. At the same time, engineers have utilized the GIS program to get the survey data graphically and geo-referenced to make planning and study much easier and straightforward. Since GIS data mostly comes from satellite or plane survey, the information provided is very detailed and with huge amount which is almost impossible to be processed by the traditional methods. For example, the total number of cross sections for a river study could be tripled using the new GIS method compared to the old one. The total points of one cross section using the GIS data could be ten times of that of the same cross section using human survey. This makes many existing methods become very time consuming, tedious and error prone because of the manual or half-manual process.
Traditionally a lot of hydraulics and hydrology calculations of watersheds were done through engineering papers to get or calculate parameters and then type them as input for other programs or spreadsheets to get the result. A lot of time is wasted in charts searching, typing data and setting up a spreadsheet, there is no automatic error checking either. Most importantly, the experience of previous projects cannot be passed to the new ones easily. With the increasing use of GIS data, this huge amount of data sometimes makes finding data or even copying or pasting data a formidable task. In this new system of calculation, the computer programs can automatically find data from the database built from engineering charts, retrieve required results from the HEC-RAS, GIS or HEC-HMS etc., perform calculation for spreadsheets without typing formula, check input-data errors, and put the output in a popularly used format. It will save huge amount of time just for one round of calculation, and usually engineers need to change input parameters many times for each step of a project, the time needed for other rounds of calculations is just clicks away.
Previously some spreadsheets were setup to calculate parts of the parameters of a watershed. Compared to manual calculations, the spreadsheets are quick and flexible, but there are several drawbacks. The first disadvantage is that engineers need to be very careful with the formula and relationship between the spreadsheet cells. Some insertion, deletion or accidents can cause unnoticed mistakes, especially when used by other people who did not design the spreadsheets. The second disadvantage is that a single modification in the future will not be updated in the old releases of the spreadsheets, and is hard to maintain because of many versions. The third disadvantage is that it cannot pre-check the input data following the engineering concepts or computation rules.
Nowadays many applications and spreadsheets are used for some calculations already but are not optimized to form a seamless stream of calculation. The results of one application need special treatments to be used by other ones. One of the major reasons for this situation is the lack of the integration of enough computer knowledge with the thorough understanding of practical hydraulics and hydrology. Another reason is that some manual or half-manual routines are hard to be generalized and optimized mathematically through computerization because of its variety and specialty. So the final new tasks for this invention are to find an optimized computation process based on a thorough engineering knowledge and create new computation methods for the non-computerized work in the process.
In the current engineering practice, one project is usually reviewed by several government agencies that have different engineering guidance and manuals. For one single calculation, there may be several kinds of settings just because of different specified parameters, and some agencies may require using different kinds of application programs to do the same task. These application programs may be upgraded in the future too. Based on all of these diversity and dynamics of changing, flexibility is very important for any method to calculate hydraulics and hydrology of watersheds.
Based on above understanding, we can see that the need to optimize the calculation processes by computer programs automatically and flexibly is imperative. These needs are widespread in many aspects such as reducing the time on inputting data, changing data format between different applications, and creating new applications for atomization and utilizing existing spreadsheets and applications.
A few options were considered. One of them is to create one single computer program, which can handle all the calculations from survey data to the final result like mapping the flood boundaries. This option is dropped since engineers will be confused in the beginning if they need to do a lot of initial setups without knowing the engineering logic. Another reason is that much information is just partial in the beginning and will be gradually completed during the progress of a project. Considering that engineers have utilized a lot of spreadsheets already to do calculations and to present reports for its flexibility and powerful functions, we come up with a flexibly automated method and system to finish the complex projects by integrating engineering concepts, logic, and other applications such as EXCEL, GIS, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS etc. .
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an efficient method and system to calculate the hydraulics and hydrology of watersheds with a variety of parameters so that the time-consuming, labor-intensive tasks can be greatly reduced. There is also a need in the art for a method and system to calculate hydraulics and hydrology of watersheds with standalone programs controlling and communicating with other computer applications such as EXCEL, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS, and GIS. There is a further need in the art for a method and system to calculate hydraulics and hydrology of watersheds with intact engineering logic and with a great flexibility to a variety of practical situations by integrating with other existing applications to form a seamless stream of calculation.